Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (31 page)

Distantly, I felt my
face smiling. The First saw the smile and paused suspiciously. He knew I was up to something but couldn’t figure out what it was.

My hands, balanced precariously on the enemy’s shoulders, poised to
leap the final distance. Then an imp onlooker spoke up. “Er, Father.” He lifted a clawed hand to point. “You have something on you.”

Turning his bald, batlike head, the First let out a
bellow of fright when he spied Lefty on his shoulder. He began dancing in a circle, slapping and stabbing himself in a useless effort to dislodge my hands. Both held on, determined to reach their goal. Righty made a quick detour and poked the First in his eye. One of the red orbs that lit the immediate vicinity went out and the imp’s leader shrieked in pain and fury.

Whirling, he
glared at me with his one remaining eye and lunged at my physical body with his sword, ignoring my armed shadow this time. The sword skewered me through the chest right between my breasts. My ribs cracked when the hilt rammed into them. The First’s face loomed over me. His breath washed over me, a stinking heat that blew my hair back from my forehead.

Concentrating harder than I ever
had before, I manoeuvred Lefty and Righty into position. Poised on either side of the First’s head, balancing on the curled over tips of his ears, they flattened themselves out against his bald skull. Unleashing the power of the holy marks, I waited for his head to explode.

Wincing
in anticipation of immense pain, the First lurched back, pulling his sword free from my flesh. Staggering back further, he stumbled into his throne. His children drew a collective breath. Time stretched out and nothing happened. Unlike every other vampire or imp that had received this treatment, his head didn’t implode. “Ah, crap,” I said quietly.
So much for my grand plan.
I was sure the holy marks would work. Why else did I have them? This was the greatest letdown I’d suffered as a vampire so far. Lefty and Righty abandoned ship, leaping to the ground and scurrying to safety.

“So, even
the fabled Mortis does not have the power to destroy me,” the First gloated. He threw his head back and began to laugh. He laughed so hard he had to sit down on his grisly throne.

At first, I thought the tendrils of smoke coming from his mouth were
just wishful thinking or maybe an optical illusion. Then he coughed and the tendrils became a cloud.

“What is happening to me?” Doubling over, he coughed again and a
gout of black blood splashed to the ground. Sizzling, it ate its way through the dirt like acid.

“I
’m pretty sure you’re dying,” I said hopefully. Lefty and Righty took the opportunity to flee to me and I knelt to reattach them.

It was taking longer than usual and wasn’t as spectacular as I’d expected but the First was definitely not well. Blood began to pour from
every orifice in thick runnels, turning his throne black. He coughed out clots and wads of the essence that had kept him alive in one form or another for fifty thousand years. Just like the vamp I’d managed to cleanse of its vampirism in Japan, every scrap of the diseased substance leaked out through any means possible.

Sizzling and smoking, the blood boiled away
and his hulking form began to fall in on itself. Screaming in pain and terror, the First beseeched me with his single remaining eye and held out a clawed hand. I felt no pity at all as the red light of his eye finally flickered then puffed out. His screams cut off at the same time, leaving behind a vast silence.

Only a
withered husk was left of the First’s body when the ooze that had been his blood dissipated. Even that suddenly broke down to dust and became unrecognizable as having ever belonged to a living creature.

My swords
unexpectedly dropped to the ground as my shadow began to shrink. I caught a fleeting feeling of gratitude from it as it became just another normal silhouette again. Now that the First was dead, the unnatural life that had powered my shadow was gone.
That means the praying mantis and her cronies are also free from his possession.

Before I could
properly process that thought, the first howl of grief and loss rang out. The imps had finally grasped the fact that their leader was dead. “Uh oh,” I murmured when the imps didn’t seem like they were about to go down with the First. I’d expected them to expire right alongside him. It was an assumption that I now regretted as ten thousand pairs of orange orbs turned to me accusingly.

I
bent and picked up my swords as the closest imps attacked. My hands twirled into action even as I heard the first explosion that announced the soldier’s presence. Ten thousand slumbering monsters began to wake. My leather suit was in tatters but the neck band saved me several times from losing my head again as the nearest imps attacked.

A strange thing happened as I cut my way through the
throng, a feeling of blood lust began to fill me. It wasn’t an urge to drink, it was an urge to kill, maim and rend. The vision I’d had of my three reflections drifted to me distantly. The imp blood that had been introduced into my system was finally starting to have an effect. I was turning into a remorseless killing machine just like the creatures I was currently slaughtering.

P
iles of limbs and bodies lay around me, impeding not just me but the furious imps as well as I killed anything that came within my reach. Enraged beyond the ability to think, the imps fought to be the one to take me down. Instead, they just died beneath my blades.

With my enhanced hearing, I made out human shouts as the army began to attack
in earnest. I hoped they’d managed to get at least some of the captives free before they’d begun setting off their explosives and firing their rockets. The thought drifted up from the blood lust clouding my mind and helped me to shake it off a bit. It gave me hope that I wouldn’t remain a mindless, murderous monster forever.

U
nsure of what was happening, the imps milled around in confusion. Two of the monsters swung at me at the same time and ended up stabbing each other when I ducked. Howling in rage, one hacked the other’s head off. With that, nearby clones began to turn on each other.

I backed away from the
fray and tripped over something. One of the young imps had crouched down behind me. They weren’t as mature as their parents but they had the same desire to maim and destroy. I was their target and they meant to have me.

My swords became slick with black ooze as I
defended myself from the nasty and freakishly fast offspring. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, I went down beneath a squirming pile of infants and half grown imps. Some mature imps joined the pile, grinding me into the ground. More and more piled on top of me until my bones began to shatter beneath their combined weight. I was being crushed beneath their mass and the pain was excruciating.

An imp baby wriggled its way through the
pile, grinning widely. Pinned down, I could do nothing to defend myself as it latched onto my cheek with its tiny, razor sharp teeth. It worried at my face like a dog with a rat. Tearing my mask off, it bit through the flesh of my cheek down to the bone. It immediately made a face and spat my flesh out but the damage was already done. My acidic blood burned right through the creature’s flesh, dissolving its cheeks and mouth. It crawled away, coughing and hacking before falling onto its side.

More of my bones shattered as another couple of imps joined the pile.
Shrieking in both pain and rage, the power of my holy marks began to build. Overflowing with power, I had to let it out before I could burst apart. Groping around with both hands, I made contact with grey flesh then released the pressure that had built up inside me.

The ground trembled then the mound of monsters still trying to
squash or bite me exploded. It wasn’t just their heads that popped this time, their entire bodies were torn apart and flung into the air in pieces. Body parts rained down in a black, bloody shower. The baby that had been trying to bite my face off disintegrated completely.

By the time I sat up to survey the damage, my injuries had healed. Hanging from one ear, the red mask was a ruined mess, matching the rest of the suit.

Petrified that they would suffer the same fate, m
ost of the offspring fled from me and ran directly into the firepower of the army. Rockets, gunfire and explosions rang out in a continual barrage of noise.

Searching through the body parts
, I located my swords beneath the rent remains of several imps and waded into the fray. An unknown length of time later, I cut down one of the last remaining imps and found myself facing Colonel Sanderson. A small team of men surrounded him. Several of the soldiers held grenades ready. Dripping with the black gore of my transformed kin and dressed in just a few scraps of my red suit, I waited silently to see whether my allies were about to become my enemies.

“Colonel,” a soldier shouted from the distance,
breaking the tense silence. “We’ve just finished off the last of them, sir!”

Eyeing me speculatively, Sanderson debated about the wisdom of attempting to blow me up then
sensibly decided not to. “Stand down, men,” he ordered and the grenades were put away. After seeing what I could do and knowing how hard I was to kill, he really didn’t have much choice. I’d only regenerate and then he would have to face a very unhappy and vindictive vampire.

“Did you
manage to save any of the captives?” I asked when he picked his way over to me through the piles of corpses. Aware of the stares at my mostly naked, gore streaked body, I picked up a loincloth that had fallen off one of the imps. Tattered and filthy, it was better than nothing so I wrapped it around myself like an extremely short towel.

Sanderson
signalled to one of his men. Bright lights sprang to life, showing the carnage all too clearly. “You gave us enough time to get most of them out,” he said. “The creatures didn’t even know we were there until we began our attack.”

Suddenly alarmed, I turned to view the bonfires. “Did you see any vampires during the attack?” At his quizzical expression, I elaborated. “They would have been wearing dirty, ragged clothing and look like they hadn’t bathed in weeks.”

Recognition dawned. “They were vampires? We thought they were recently captured humans.”

“Don’t tell me they got away?”
I groaned in real anguish. After all the time and energy I’d put into hunting down the praying mantis, she’d waltzed right out from under my nose. With the First dead, their shadows were no longer in possession of them. The courtiers would once more be forced to obey the Comtesse’s commands.

“Are they dangerous?”
Sanderson asked me.

“Only to
me and my friends,” I muttered.
And any good looking humans the Comtesse stumbles across.
Apparently, the white haired witch went both ways and chose both men and women to torment.

“I’ll set up a task force to hunt them down,” he decided. “There were only a hundred or so.”

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” I told him wearily. “The Comtesse is ancient, crafty and way smarter than either of us.” And how it galled me to admit that. “She’ll find somewhere to hide and you’ll die from old age before you’ll be able to find her.”

Disgruntled at my
unflattering assessment of his abilities to take down the vampires, the American kicked a lump of grey flesh away in frustration. “Do you really expect me to do nothing when I know a pack of unholy blood suckers is roaming around Europe?”

“Yep,” I told him bluntly. “Leave us alone or I can
guarantee you’ll end up dead.”

“Sir!”
A soldier yelled in close to panic. “A vampire has turned himself in and is asking to speak to, er, her.” He pointed at me, eyes flicking to my makeshift clothing then to my swords and finally to my face.

Debating
the wisdom of allowing an unknown vampire to approach, the Colonel finally nodded. “Bring him over but keep him covered.”

I had no idea why any of the surviving vampires would want to speak to me. As far as I knew, all of
the Court vamps wanted me dead.

Before the
courtier reached us, Sanderson asked me a question that made my hackles try to rise. “Are you aware that your eyes are glowing orange?”

Without a mirror handy, I couldn’t verify that for myself. Then I remembered I did have a mirror of sorts and raised one of the swords. Sure enough, my eyes were glowing again. “That happens when I fight sometimes,” I told the soldier.
It does now anyway.

As the six soldiers escorting the vampire r
eached the perimeter of lights, I had my confirmation that he was a courtier. His once pristine black suit and white shirt were now dirty and torn. He’d lost his red cummerbund at some stage and it gave him a less formal look.

Ignoring the guns trained at his heart and head, the vamp pushed his way
through the soldiers. Dropping to his knees before me, he bowed down low. “My Queen,” he said in a tone that was close to being worshipful. “I am yours to command.” If he’d noticed the strange colour of my eyes, he didn’t seem to be put out by it.